The joint and multi-national military exercise Northern Strike 2018 is currently underway in the US.
Coordinated by the Michigan Army National Guard, the military readiness exercise is designed to optimise the full-spectrum combat readiness of each participating unit.
Exercise Northern Strike 2018 will see the participation of five thousand members of the armed forces from Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and the UK.
For the event, the US Air Force’s (USAF) 821st Contingency Response Group (CRG) from Travis Air Force Base (AFB), California, deployed two small teams in support of the exercise.
One of the two teams was deployed at Grayling Army Airfield while the other was deployed at Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center (CRTC), both located in northern Michigan, US.
The first mission carried out by the Grayling Army Airfield team was to load an army M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System into a C-130H Hercules aircraft to be transported to the Alpena CRTC.
Grayling Army Airfield contingency response team chief master sergeant Kyle Prewitt said: “We have some influence over every sphere of the movements for this mission.
“It provides a look at some unique mission sets for our CRG members and a wonderful opportunity in smaller scale environment that allows more flexibility for training.”
During the exercise, the CR teams worked together with a number of army units and the Air National Guard’s 165th Airlift Wing from Savannah, Georgia, US.
